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Tag Archive: Translation

Another Lee Jeok song. Well, kind of. It’s Lee Jeok’s cover of Yoon Jongshin’s “That Day from Long Ago” for Yoon Jongshin’s “Monthly Melody” of December 2013. This cover, like Sung Sikyung’s cover of “Tomorrow’s Things to Do,” stuck to me for a while and has remained a song I enjoy listening to even as I happen upon new releases or old songs for the first time. There’s a solemn, sorrowful quality to that oddly draws my attention. Maybe it isn’t so odd that I like this song if my previous translations pose any indication of my music taste (and enjoyment of ballads), but this song feels especially slow. Perhaps because of the slow, pulsed piano notes in the instrumental and the sustained notes in the song. There’s an encumbered, dragging pace to it as if something heavy (emotions?) is being protracted and stretched as far as possible, so much so that you linger on every step you take as you bear a heavy weight. I almost feel as if the song drags me with it, making me a bit solemn or sad with each listen even if I’m not originally in a downcast mood. And is it weird that I kind of like the feeling of being slowed down and weighed down by this song? Or maybe it’s just that I feel like I can relate to it.

With this song, I posted a few translation notes that I thought worthy of mention under the cut. Also under the cut is Yoon Jongshin’s original version from 1993. It definitely has a quality different from Lee Jeok’s version, and I think it’s in a higher key (correct me if I’m wrong).

About a month ago, Lee Haeri won the Park Sangmin episode of Immortal Song 2 with the highest number of votes ever obtained by a female on the show (435/500) through her cover of his song, “Sunflower.” Above is the performance (unfortunately of lower video quality) and below is my translation of the lyrics into English. Continue reading →

So…back in January, I attempted to translate this after watching Roy Kim’s cover of it on Superstar K Season 4. (He went on to win the American Idol-like show and release quite a few songs; how time has flown by!) But I got stuck along some of the lyrics (mainly the repeated chorus), which I hopefully have correctly translated here.

I feel that both the original by Yoon Gun and the cover by Roy Kim are worth giving a listen to; they’re different, but have nice, unique qualities in the style of each respective artist.

Seeing as I had some time one my hands, I wanted to post something on this blog; as I have been pretty away from the Korean scene recently, I couldn’t really think of posting anything but a translation. I previously heard that Ailee would be collaborating with Yiruma, and upon giving it a listen earlier today, the song isn’t bad. It isn’t exactly amazing or anything, but it truly isn’t bad. The message behind the lyrics kind of remind me of Epik High’s “Up” and are overall, as the title of the song suggests, uplifting.

[*I’m not sure if there’s any music video, so I just posted the audio above, and a performance below.]

This track is a bit hard to translate in the sense that it omits a lot of pronouns or antecedents that are necessary in English, even as it’s easy to understand. Yoon Minsoo‘s voice is pleasantly deep and emotional, as always. Where pronouns or antecedents are omitted in the literal Korean version, I will use [ ] brackets.

This song can seem like a bore because it’s so slow and repetitive, but I feel that the combination of such a slow tempo, repetitive parallel structure-type lyrics , and Yoon Minsoo’s solemn and resonant voice really contribute to make the piece feel meaningful, sincere, and *sad*. I think the parallel structure – as almost each line of the lyrics has some variation of “[I] want to meet . . . the/that girl” – really serves to emphasize that the speaker of the song is practically just rattling off a list of reasons or articulations of why he thinks he should be able to meet “that girl” or why he wants to meet her. It seems as if the speaker is so caught up in his sadness that he deliberately doesn’t make any attempt to give the repetitive dryness any exciting (or at least intriguing) changes or mix-ups or color; making the song interesting seems so unnecessary to the speaker in light of his main purpose of conveying such sadness. Thus, I thought it best to try to stick to the literal in my translation and indicate where I inserted pronouns or phrases. This song is dull, but only purposefully so. (I’ll admit, though, that I got a little bored of it after trying to put it on repeat. Not quite the music you want to listen to to brighten your day or to encourage yourself to do work.)

Below is a performance of the piece, along with another piece, at a Vibe showcase:

It has been quite a while since I last posted on this blog, and I suspect I will never revive it back to its glory/peak days, but I always love to come back to this blog whenever there’s a song that I like [so much that I want to translate it].

I’ve been listening to this song a lot recently; I really love the heavy guitar instrumental and the overall melody. Moreover, a big plus is always being able to understand most of the lyrics without even having to look at a translation or the Korean hangul for that matter. :) Continue reading →

And yet another Davichi song that I like! Even as Davichi has veered more into upbeat or more pop-sounding songs recently, their more sad ballad-y tracks are also enjoyable to revisit and listen to. Translation below: